Issue 3: Steven Waling
DILUTE TO TASTE
A bottle in the cupboard. Monday:
dream of Tom Conti in The Dresser.
I’m at the bus-stop waiting. Who
played The Actor. No idea why
gets out of bed light through curtains
weak as cheap teabags. Raining.
Gloop purples the bottom of a glass.
Put Breakfast on. The bus leaving
is late. I sit with my glass, red jam
butties, Dad’s Army, Two Ronnies.
They’re talking to Jason Donovan, his
part in Priscilla Queen of the Desert.
“It’s not funny, it’s stupid”, said of Python.
An abstract thought throws a sandwich
on the road. It supposes it must work.
Love Thy Neighbour, On The Buses,
how the parents lap them up. Makes
coffee in the cafetiere because.
On the bus a weight slides off my back.
Stayed up for The Old Grey Whistle Test,
or because Monday needs a good
kick to wake up. Old homestead slides
back to the back of my head.
It was Freddy Jones played The Actor,
first play I saw. Vimto chops:
she bought Ribena by mistake.
It reads three pages of a novel
it’s not getting into. Empty heads
of the Age of Full Employment, Suddenly
unsure if it was Tom Courteney after all.
THE LOCAL
her varying subject matter
what's a little rain
creamy Victorian market hall
of its shoe leather
hide your thoughts close
you preferred your own company
Miners Arms Sacred Heart
even good typists make errors
no worse there is none
in that demolished space
not eating enough losing the thread
appeal for the Pals' memorial
between dark and light
candour you'd rather we forgot
the bus stammers out
the kind of rain that soaks
as a short-sighted private
but you never visit
and don't come back
clouds drop low on the hills
who died on the wires and
you should have been there
hung there one of two
two more holes in the road
the scrubbed and washed estate
become a thin place
wives locked in marriage
forgets where it put itself
the harmonics of the poetic
the memorial to the fallen
quiet and simple
the kind of rain that soaks
because you never stay
return please to Manchester
by the hole in the middle
rain sluicing down
avant-garde despite itself
last night's fireworks tater pie
youth's whiny voice
the old man's complaint
blank space and brick dust
weren't you the mardy get
and a long list of names
a unique waterside view
this kind of intense
chance encounters at work
the local rag
the kind of rain that soaks
THE COPPICE
(Sample: Paul Davies, The Last Three Minutes)After Easter the Cross is put away
A man zig-zags up the path finds the
triangulation point We can breathe easily
the view becomes clear he sees All
this space means cosmic collisions are rare
the old mills cancelled lovely into history
the galaxy is not static Easterlies stream
over the top Was a time he’d run steep down
to park gates and the street where we
are now exhilarating new trees grow
Heather he doesn’t recall purples on top
the expansion of the universe He picks it
walks past the shelter’s still broken seats
graffiti As the comets plunge through
the inner solar system passes the flooded
quarry but violent death is less of a threat
on by then slow decay down to the road
etching its acid through the hills Something
tiny rat or vole crosses his path and he
turns back to his life Our own fate entangled
streets abstract like the veins of a
Steven Waling is the author of Travelator (Salt 2007) and publishes poetry in many magazine and online. He lives in Manchester, and was recently writer-in-residence at HMP Whatton.
Copyright © 2009 by Steven Waling, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
